Playing Cards
by Reikah
Summary: Post-series: the group arrive in a new world in the middle of a festival, but as Fai discovers, what they're celebrating could have a great deal of personal and tragic relevance. Established Kurogane x Fai, lemon.


Hi everyone! Start of a new arc here, each chapter is a self-contained fic. I have no excuse for whole adventure other than the fact that it contains the three things I love most in the whole world, and I have no self-control. I do hope you enjoy it!

**Title:** Playing Cards  
**Rating:** Adult  
**Pairing:** Fai/Kurogane  
**Summary:** Post-series fic. The group arrive in a new world in the midst of a celebration... though what the locals are celebrating isn't exactly conventional.  
**Warnings:** This fic contains mistreatment of children and lemony content, although thankfully not at the same time.  
**Notes:** This is the start of a new arc, and it is set after Eijentu's marvellous Kurofai fanfic Looking Out From Underneath which can be found at eijentu. dreamwidth dot org/2845. html (please remove the spaces). It's a very sweet, heartwarming fic, so you should totally read it.

* * *

**I. The Tower**

_The Tower card depicts a burning tower being struck by lightning or fire from the sky, its top section dislodged and crumbling. Two men are depicted in mid-fall, against a field of multicolored balls._

_This card follows immediately after The Devil in all Tarots that contain it, and is considered an ill omen. Frequent keywords include 'chaos,' 'crisis,' 'ruin,' and 'sudden/violent transformation'._

The sounds of the celebration buffeted them from the moment Mokona dumped them by the lake. Kurogane narrowed his eyes, turning in a quick circle to take in their surroundings; the world wasn't a familiar one, and they had been placed outside a high stone curtain wall ringing a small-ish town. A world of people of Fai's colouring, Kurogane suspected, judging from the architecture. There were stakes nailed outside the wall to discourage invaders - but the gates were open, a lantern hanging from their crossbeam and burning brightly, and there were no guards visible.

"How odd," Fai said, standing on one foot and pulling off his boot, upending it to spill water all over the cobblestone road. Some of them had landed closer to the lake than others.

Syaoran was climbing back to his feet, shaking himself off; Mokona dropped onto his shoulder and waved her ears happily. "Sounds like a party," she said, and it did; fiddle music and lots of people in the town itself, talking and shouting. Either that or an invasion, but the shrieks sounded more pleased than scared. Kurogane let his hands fall to his side, resisting the urge to pull Ginryuu free from flesh.

They encountered their first revellers just around the corners from the gatehouse, and they may well have been the designated guards, resplendent in blue-coated uniforms with tall feather-adorned shakos. They were sitting on a bench with a barrel of wine next to them, laughing and joking and toasting at random. They didn't even notice the travellers until Fai slid into a spare spot on the bench opposite them, beaming harmlessly.

"Hi," he said, "We're new here. Nobody was on the gates, so we're just -"

"New?" One of the soldiers was trying to look at him, though he seemed to have imbibed enough wine to make it tricky. "Travellers?"

"Oh, absolutely," Fai said, spreading his hands wide and still smiling. "We were wondering if we could perhaps stay the night. Is there an inn?"

Another soldier chuckled. "You could stay all week if you wanted," he said, "It's a festival for everyone!"

"You're too late if you're responding to the mayor's notice though," another added with a smug grin. "_That_ business has been good and dealt with. Here, wine!"

"No thanks," Kurogane growled, but the wooden cup of wine was shoved at him with such force that he accepted it rather than let it fall. Next to him Syaoran was sipping cautiously at his cup, a curious expression on his face like he maybe wasn't sure if it was going to bite him back.

"Wiiiiine," Fai sang, and from Syaoran's hood Mokona made a soft pouty noise. Kurogane discreetly passed her his cup.

"What's the festival for?" Syaoran asked, turning his mug delicately in his hands. The soldiers were guzzling their drinks like there was a prize at the bottom of the barrel.

"It's simple," said the lead soldier. "We're finally _free_! No more hiding or cowering, we can sit and we can drink! The emperor himself sent them all the way from the capital!"

"If you're looking for the inn, it's in the square," one of his comrades added. "Jaques is the innkeeper, tell him Sergeant Edouard sent you from the West Gate!"

Fai smiled and upended his cup. "And how do we get from here to the square, Sergeant?"

The man proceeded to rattle off a complicated set of directions that involved taking numerous twists and turns through the alleyways and side streets. Kurogane tuned him out, confident one of his companions or another would get them, and glanced around; the buildings were tall and made of brickwork, with heavy metal shutters outside. Iron spikes had been hammered into their roofs, as if to discourage birds from nesting there.

Behind him Fai was waving his goodbyes to the drunken gate guards, standing and brushing his white clothing down and putting his empty cup on the bench. Syaoran followed his example. "Where to?" Kurogane demanded, as they walked away, and Fai beamed at him.

"No clue. He was slurring something dreadful; I wasn't paying attention. How about you, Syaoran-kun?"

Syaoran blinked at him. "I thought _you_ were listening."

"Whoops."

Kurogane exchanged a _look_ with the kid. Fai didn't sound all that worried. "Whatever," he said, "Can't be that hard to find the goddamn town square."

The narrow streets were full of people, which complicated matters some, but other than that it was fairly easy to find their way. Bonfires were burning at every free corner, and the alcohol was flowing. Anybody who seemed to have an instrument was performing for the crowds with it, which wasn't necessary a good thing, Kurogane thought, when the player was inept. The outpouring of public sentiment was a little overwhelming.

"Maybe it's religious," Syaoran was saying as they rounded a corner.

"A religiously-ordained festival of drunken hedonism?" Fai sounded appreciative, damn him.

"I think it's more personal," Kurogane said. A woman skipped over to them from a doorway, chased by catcalls and whistles from her female friends, and gave Syaoran a wineskin; when he accepted it with a smile she blushed as red as her hair and fled back to safety.

"They certainly seem not to mind us," Fai commented.

"As long as I get to keep my clothes on this time," Kurogane groused, and Syaoran, who had taken a sip of the wineskin, spat the contents out and had to have his back thumped by Fai.

"I thought we agreed never to talk about that?" Fai inquired cheerfully.

Kurogane ignored this, instead addressing Syaoran's hood as the boy picked himself up. "You can probably come out, pork bun, we're almost there."

"Wai~!" Mokona shot out of her concealment like a cork from a champagne bottle, bouncing off the crown of Fai's head before settling on Kurogane's. He didn't bother chasing her off. She took an appreciative sniff of their surroundings. "Mmm, Mokona smells _red wine_!"

"Ask permission before you drink it all," Kurogane said.

There was a smokey scent to the air now, and the music and talk seemed louder. Fai hesitated at a junction, looking between the streets, and then pointed at one that seemed no different than the others. "That way, I think."

The town square was wider and greener than the rest of the area. It was dripping with ribbons; bonfires burned in its corners, and the inn was visible by the men going in and out of its doors lugging kegs out of its storeroom. Some folk had put together a raised dais, and in the light of the late afternoon there were six people on it, playing an assortment of instruments that actually sounded decent - well, mostly. Still, they weren't the primary focus of the masses of industrious people working around the village green.

Their attention was on the great corpse strewn across the grass, black blood smeared over the cobbles.

"Well," Syaoran said, after a silent moment of surprise, the three of them staring at the huge carcass with its thick tail and bright silver scales, reflecting bonfire light and throwing it back in dazzling spots against the buildings, "Dragonslaying is as good a cause to celebrate as any."

Kurogane narrowed his eyes, jaw clenching, but Fai's hand flew out and grabbed his wrist before he could react. "This isn't home, Kuro-sama," Fai said in a low voice. "This isn't your Ginryuu. For all we know, it could have been a killer."

"They're a symbol of _good luck_," Kurogane snarled, and Fai breathed out through his nose and nodded.

"Maybe where you come from," he said. Kurogane tugged his hand free irritably, but he didn't reach for his sword. Someone had draped a flag over the dragon's long tail.

"Excuse me," Syaoran said, approaching one of the crowds around one of the bonfires, "But what happened here?"

A woman squinted at him suspiciously. She wore a plain white linen dress and a brown headscarf over her black hair. "You don't know?"

"I'm from far away," Syaoran said quickly, and then, with a glance back at his friends, swooped quickly into the usual story. "I'm a wandering scholar and compiler of a travelling journal, on a journey to collect material for my next novel - this is Fai, my assistant, and Kurogane, my bodyguard."

"Pleased to meet you," Fai said. Kurogane just folded his arms over his chest and grunted.

A man standing next to the woman nudged her and grinned. "It'll be nice to see our town in print," he said cheerfully. "I'm Theophile, this is my wife Florenze! What do you want to know?"

There was a pause while Syaoran collected a quill and pot of ink from Mokona, who discretely spat them out into Fai's hood, then another pause while he asked them how to spell their names, which filled them with pride even if they didn't know on account of being illiterate. Kurogane stared at the dragon instead. Some diligent men in brown leather were using a hammer and chisel to chip off its scales, each silvery disc larger than Kurogane's palm. The dragon's head was crooked on its long neck; its cloudy blue eye was slit-pupilled, dilated in death. It had four legs, with way more toes than Kurogane had ever heard of on a dragon - not to mention two huge, sail-like wings, as silvery as its scales but seemingly formed out of some kind of membrane instead.

"She was a fire-breather," Theophile was saying behind them. Fai was making random squiggles in a notebook, pretending to be copying it down in keeping with his act as Syaoran's assistant; it wasn't Ceresian script and it definitely wasn't Japanese. Syaoran was listening intently. "She spent years wreaking havoc on the animals, burning the fields, stealing our cattle. She got a couple of our youngsters too -"

"Oh my," Syaoran said. "How?"

"Jeanne and Issac," said Florenze. "They were fifteen years old and good kids, left the walls to see to her dad's flock, never came back. We found their shoes. Burnt, of course."

Kurogane _tched_ but said nothing. The villagers had evidently been at the dragon's scales for a few hours already, and some of them had been mounted to a wooden plaque and hung up over one of the buildings opposite the square. A small boy was climbing over her corpse with a rope.

"I'm sorry to hear that, Syaoran said gravely. "I hope you were able to give them a proper funeral."

Florenze sighed deeply, giving the corpse of the silver dragon a disgusted look. "We would have if we could. But dragonfire burns so hot, there were no bones left."

Kurogane narrowed his eyes, but his companions didn't react. Fai was still scribbling fiendishly, but on closer inspection, he wasn't so much pretending to write as drawing a stick-figure cat and stick-figure dog next to each other on the bottom corner of the page. The stick figure dog was holding a sword in its tail.

"So the Mayor sent a letter to the Emperor in Versailles asking for help..." Theophile continued, and Fai leant in.

Apparently the dragon had been making life hell for the villagers for the last ten years; she'd befouled the lake deliberately by slaughtering their livestock and dumping the corpses in the water, she'd burnt their fields, killed any animals left out for pasture, set fire to the forest around them to keep them from harvesting the wood and all but terminated their operations at a nearby iron mine. They'd tried placating her by leaving animals out for her overnight. She'd just dropped said animals onto their houses.

"I don't understand," Fai said, pausing in his pointless scratching at the page, "If she could breath fire, why wouldn't she just burn down the village?"

"She would if she could," Florenze told them. "But we had a priest come and bless every structure in the village to ward off dragonfire back when we set the village up. Of course, there were two of them then, not just one."

Everyone had known about the dragons of the mountain range and the forest under it, including how fiercely territorial they were. But the Empire was, at the time, going to war; and the land and grants offered for settling and mining the iron deposits were worth the risk. The priest had travelled with them from the capital and worked his enchants into every building, including the iron shutters. The dragons had visited and tried, but their flames were useless.

Back then the villagers had tried leaving out food to placate the pair - the silver female and a sky-blue male - and it had been more successful, but also punishing on their herds. The two of them could and did eat a cow a night. So the mayor had advertised for dragon hunters, only to find out that in the world beyond their doorstep, dragons were a myth. One man had turned up, a tall foreign fellow with dark hair and only one eye, the other an unerring fake construction made of glass with a pale grey iris. He'd brought with him a packet of poison, doped the sacrifical cow up to the gills, and sent it off.

The male dragon had taken three weeks to die of the poison, and the female kept away; they'd counted it as a success until she had re-appeared ten years ago with a vengeance.

"That's terrible," Fai said. He cast a wary glance at Kurogane, who had set his jaw. "Did you poison her too?"

"The Emperor sent _experts_," Theophile told them with some glee. "We petitioned him for help after she killed those kids and he sent a whole band of dragonslayers. Without them... nobody would be out on the streets if they could help it, but now, now we can drink and make merry as we like!" He turned back to the people around the bonfire, holding up his mug of wine. "A toast to the Emperor's dragonslayers!"

"It seems tacky to me," Fai said in private, once they were away from the crowd by the bonfire. They were standing under the shadow of the silver dragon's wing; a rope was fastened around the joint and some men were standing by her head with a bit of paper stretched out over a table, discussing amongst themselves in a low voice as they jabbed at the sheet with forefingers.

"It's gloating," Kurogane said flatly. "It's the sign of a coward. These people didn't even kill her."

The dragonslayers were the men in brown leather, but they weren't the only ones celebrating her demise by taking parts of the corpse off to use as trophies.

"She killed two people," Fai reminded him in a low voice. "I understand you have an affinity with the creatures, but..."

"Um," Syaoran said, rejoining them. He'd stayed, talking to Florenze and Theophile and the other villagers around the bonfire. "Apparently Jeanne and Issac were interested in each other, but their parents didn't approve. And I don't know... I didn't want to say anything in front of people, but no bones? Anybody can burn a shoe in a firepit. I don't know, Fai-san; it seems tacky to me, too."

"Mokona doesn't like it," the pork bun offered flatly. Her ears were drooping and she was huddled against Fai's shoulder. "Mokona hopes we can leave soon."

Fai touched her earring with his fingertips and shook his head, minutely, and all of them sighed. Fai said, "We might as well find some place to settle while we wait."

The inn was a squat low building with a common room bustling full of people. There was a long table near the hearthfire full of drunks shouting and hollering, and it didn't take Kurogane long to realise they had one of the dragon's talons on the table. It was as long as Syaoran, curved and razor-sharp. Kurogane could feel his lip curl in distaste; no way in hell were these people worthy of displaying her talons like prizes.

The innkeeper was at a desk to the side of the common room. He'd taken his sign down from outside and was carefully painting a new slogan onto it. Kurogane and Fai couldn't read it, but Syaoran could, and at their request he mumbled that the inn was changing its name from _The Admiral_ to _The Dragon's Claw_.

"Travellers?" Jaques, the innkeeper, was a skinny man with bad teeth. He carefully put his paintbrush back in the pot and blew on the sign, then stood up straight. "Welcome to _The Dragon's Claw_ inn! Will you be wanting a room?"

Syaoran nodded. "Preferably more than one. I'm Li Syaoran, an author of travelling journals from a country far away from here..."

While he went through the rest of their introduction, Fai pressed himself a little closer to Kurogane's side. "Stop clenching your teeth, Kuro-sama," he murmured. "You'll give yourself jaw ache."

"You understand," said Jaques, "That what with our recent triumph against fair lady silver out there that we're expecting a lot of guests."

Syaoran nodded, unsurprised. "How much?"

"A hundred francs per room," Jaques said. "Per night."

His dark eyes flitted back and forth between them and Kurogane growled under his throat; should have anticipated that the man would press his advantage. Syaoran just looked grave and reached into an inner pocket of his travelling robes. "We don't carry that many francs on us," he said. "But perhaps this would suffice, if you wished to take it to a local jeweler."

'This' was a pair of golden earrings, set with sapphires and dripping with gold mesh. At the sight of them Fai grinned and rubbed at the shell of his ears; he'd been given them six worlds ago, his reward for helping rescue that kingdom's princess from some bandits - a slightly less naive version of that construct of his, who went by _Elda_ instead of _Chi_. Syaoran had received a silver-and-emerald choker and Kurogane an ornate dagger.

There was a delay while Jaques sent his daughter off to find the town pawnbroker to get the earrings appraised, which the travellers spent sitting on the stairs leading up from the common room to the private rooms and talking amongst themselves. Kurogane couldn't say he was happy at sleeping for the night so close to a dead dragon. Especially not a silver dragon, even if she looked nothing like the one that had been the inspiration for Ginryuu.

Kurogane's father had been quite fond of the story of their province's foundation. Their ancestors, he used to say, had been refugees fleeing from a neighbouring province; the soldiers had chased them to the border of present-day Suwa and stopped, for Suwa then had been _dragon territory_. The last dragon-god of Nihon had resided therein and nobody wanted to be the idiot to incur his wrath.

The spokesperson for the refugees was a beautiful woman, the founding princess of Suwa - "She was almost - not quite, but _almost_ as beautiful as your mother," Kurogane's father had said, earning him an amused chuckle from that lady herself. The refugees had woken the dragon, but rather than burning the men and women to cinders the dragon had been captured with the princess' beauty and granted her people leave to settle in his land.

"But a dragon and a princess, no matter how much they may love each other, can never truly _be_," his mother had continued where his father trailed off. "So the dragon petitioned the gods, and was granted humanity. They say he made a handsome man indeed... although not so handsome as Suwa's current Lord."

"My lady, you're making me blush," Kurogane's father had replied, and then they were _looking_ at each other in that way that Kurogane, young as he was, had felt wholly inappropriate and rather embarrassing.

"We didn't really have dragons in Ceres," Fai was saying. "They were... myths. Greedy, selfish, evil beasts with great treasure troves the hero would have to slay to rescue the princess, you understand."

"Kind of like St George from my world," Syaoran said, thoughtfully. "It was a western fairy tale, I think - from a country, or countries, far away from Hong Kong, where I grew up. The dragon stole a princess and George had to go rescue it. I don't remember if there were treasure troves involved, though."

Fai nodded. "In old Valerian religion, there was a dragon who was supposed to be eating the roots of the world tree, the tree that kept the world together. I remember that much." He shrugged. "I always wondered why a _dragon_ would be eating a _tree_... but it wasn't the only thing about Valeria that didn't make much sense.

Kurogane narrowed his eyes, but Fai didn't sound pained. And that was probably the case, he knew. Fai never lied anymore, not to Kurogane; he still lied to strangers - about who they were and what they were doing and what he was, even, if strangers asked; but they were white lies, now, and they hurt nobody. With Kurogane and Syaoran and Mokona he was himself for the first time ever.

And watching him - watching him, Kurogane thought he understood the way his parents used to look at one another back then.

* * *

Jaques' daughter returned bearing the earrings in a little velvet pouch and looking faintly impressed. Her father had one look at the letter the pawnbroker had given her, another long look at the travellers, and then his whole demeanor switched and he was suddenly all smiles; smiles which Fai returned, although he clearly didn't mean them.

Syaoran got them two rooms at the back of the inn, away from the square. Jaques had offered them private rooms, but Syaoran had taken one look at Kurogane and Fai and assured him that, "My companions don't mind sharing. Board is included with the price, I assume?"

"Thank you for not saying anything," Fai said, when they were alone. He crossed over to one of the two thick beds and threw his bags onto it, quirking an eyebrow at Kurogane, who pressed down on the mattress of the other bed and nodded. "I know you don't like it. Neither do I. But -"

"I know," Kurogane interrupted. "It doesn't matter. We'll be out of this world eventually."

"With any luck." Fai threw himself belly-down onto the bed and rolled around wildly, pummeling his pillow into shape; and then he slipped back out and undid his cloak, letting it puddle down to the ground around him.

"What are you doing?"

"The last time we were alone together we were interrupted," Fai said cheerfully. He sat back down on his bed and began unlacing his boots. "The party's going to be going for a while, the people have other things to do than bother us, and Syaoran expected us to be doing just this or he wouldn't've gotten us both a room together."

Kurogane breathed out slowly. No matter how many years it had been - since he put that strange silver band on Fai's finger back there in the shrine of the world of Yama's future, since Syaoran had first caught them together, since their first fumbling time - since he had cut his arm off to keep this man with him and watched Fai pay for its replacement with the blue of his right eye... he would never truly be comfortable with the idea that Syaoran not only knew, but encouraged.

Fai was peeling off the last of his clothing, unashamed and with warmth in his eyes, and well, that was a better argument than any. He made his way across the space between the two beds, linking his arms around Kurogane's neck and leaning up on the balls of his feet to kiss him; and Kurogane bent down to kiss him back. Fai's skin was warm even through his clothes, and Kurogane felt the warm heat in his belly, lazy and satisfied.

"We don't know if we'll get privacy again," Fai murmured. He brushed a thumb over Kurogane's jaw. "Come on."

Like Kurogane was going to argue with _that_. He gave Fai a light push, tipping them over onto the bed with the harder mattress - the better one, in his opinion; feather mattresses were too soft, nothing like a proper futon cover. Fai was burning hot in his arms, and he made a pleased sort of noise when Kurogane kissed at his jaw, making his way up to the lobe of his ear. His fingers were slipping negligently underneath Kurogane's jacket, hooking around buttons and slipping them easily and quickly through their eyes.

"Hold still," Kurogane growled. He wanted to be the one undressing for some reason, some need to watch Fai's reaction to the removal of his clothing. Fai just smiled and settled back against the mattress, lazily folding his arms behind his head, and raised an eyebrow by way of encouragement. His throat and belly and hips were very pale, but he'd picked up a slight tan on his arms and face, and Kurogane reached for his hand, the one with the silver band around its finger, and kissed Fai's throat just to feel the way it hitched under his mouth.

His clothes soon joined Fai's on the floor, puddles of white and blue that were distinguishable from Fai's only in their larger size. Fai's pupils were a little wider than they had been, and Kurogane could feel him, stiff and eager against his thigh. He grinned into the idiot's neck, and Fai snorted softly and then flipped them over with an ease that spoke of his inhuman nature.

There was a time when Kurogane would have objected to this. Near-naked under another person, in a place he didn't know surrounded by people he didn't know; there would have been no way he'd've allowed it. That was then. This was now, with _Fai_, and his response to the change in position was not to fight his way free but instead to settle a hand on the small of Fai's back, dragging him closer and grinning at the way Fai grit his teeth. They were both hard, but Fai was a lot less subtle about it than he was.

"Did you think to get the pork bun to spit up some oil before you sent her and the kid off to their room?" he asked, rubbing his jaw against the side of Fai's face and then angling his head to kiss the idiot's temple. Fai was thrusting against him, short, shallow, unconscious jerks of his hips.

"In my pocket," Fai murmured back. He shifted, tipping Kurogane's head back by exerting pressure against his chin, and kissed his throat lazily. He'd never really fed from there, but he let his fangs loose just enough that they scraped against the skin, and Kurogane grunted. He'd been half-hard before; now he was there and his cock was pressed against warm unyielding flesh and it wasn't _helping_. Fai lifted his face, grinning bright and warm and happy, and Kurogane growled and shoved at him with a fraction of his real strength.

"Go get it."

"Maybe I like being here," Fai crooned in a sing-song voice. He rocked against Kurogane again, eyebrows lifting in delight when Kurogane swore under his breath.

"Enough," Kurogane growled. He pushed again and Fai let go of him, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, and sat up to snag his trousers from the floor; Kurogane sat up and then paused. His trousers were bunched around his left ankle and he was still wearing his left boot.

This wasn't even the first time that had happened. With a small sigh he set about unlacing them while Fai twisted, tube of lube in hand, to watch what he was doing. The wizard was grinning; it was a feral grin, sharp and bright, and Kurogane took note of it and couldn't help but grin back. So. It was going to be one of _those_ nights.

Outside a _bang_ shook the inn and they both tensed instinctively, exchanging glances, and then with a sigh Kurogane shoved his way past Fai off the bed, grabbing his idiot's cloak from the floor and wrapping it around his bare waist as he made his way over to the room's sole window, undoing the shutter to have a look outside.

"Fireworks," he announced with some disgust.

"It's a special occasion," Fai agreed behind him flippantly.

Kurogane let the shutter bang closed again with a low growl and turned back to find Fai on his belly on the bed, pretending to read a copy of Kurogane's maganyan. He was using the hand with the wedding band to turn the pages, glancing at Kurogane every now and then under his eyelashes, and he was an idiot and it was unsubtle but Kurogane dropped the cloak and stalked over toward him, leaning forward to steal the volume and tossing it aside.

"Kuro-sama should be more careful with belongings of his," Fai said. The odd inflection keyed Kurogane into something he hadn't noticed before.

"You've been talking Japanese?"

"Mmm. Since we got here." Fai grinned at him crookedly. "I'm getting better, apparently."

Kurogane nodded. To claim otherwise would only be a lie, and serve only to hurt Fai. That wouldn't help. Instead he took a seat on the edge of the bed, watching the way Fai's spine curved as the man himself looked at him; he was still skinny and pale, there, where the sun seldom penetrated clothing. Despite himself Kurogane leaned forward and settled a hand over one shoulder blade, felt the sleek muscle there.

"I want to fuck you," Fai said, without an ounce of shame. He produced the tube of oil.

Kurogane let out a huff of amusement and kissed his bare shoulder. "You ask all the boys like that?"

"No." Fai rolled over lazily, showing off his belly and throat and grinning up at Kurogane. He was utterly exposed and Kurogane could see at least six dozen ways to kill him with one blow... but why would he ever want to? "Just my _spouse_."

The way Fai curled his voice around the world sent shivers through Kurogane's spine, and before he knew it they were side by side on the bed, Fai's fingers curled around his metal shoulder, still holding the lube, and Fai's tongue in his mouth, burning hot skin and heavy, needing erections pressed together. Fai's free hand was pressed lightly against his stomach.

"Do what you want to do," Kurogane said, and Fai's teeth flashed white and even as he grinned.

It was hardly the first time they'd done this. Fai knew how to slick his fingers, how to prepare Kurogane sufficiently, how many fingers to use and how to stretch them just _so_. It was weird as hell lying there on his side with his leg cocked, but Fai was smart enough to keep him entertained by kissing his way across Kurogane's shoulder and down his chest, the pad out of his tongue dragging out rough and warm over one of his nipples just to fuck with him; it sent a warm bolt of pleasure all the way down his spine and Kurogane jerked and growled. That only made Fai grin smugly, even as his fingers were twisting and scissoring _inside_ him, expertly manipulating his body in the pursuit of his own pleasure.

Outside the sound of music and voices was a steady constant, ebbing and flowing like waves on the shore, but it didn't bother him in here. Fai looked so content, even as his fingers crooked just _so_ and Kurogane grunted at the spark of heat in his balls; the blond looked up, that mischievous grin on his face, and Kurogane _had_ to kiss him. Fai's mouth was hot and sweet, his tongue rough and his teeth sharp but not enough to hurt. He tasted like red wine.

"I'm fine," Kurogane said. "Whenever you're done fucking around."

"Kuro-sama knows his romance," Fai replied with an exaggerated sigh; but he was sliding his fingers out, wiping them off fastidiously against a handkerchief that Kurogane hadn't even _noticed_ until then. He reached back for the tube and gave Kurogane a shove, onto his back. That was one of the weird things about him; when he fucked Kurogane, he liked them to be facing each other. Kurogane had long since given up wondering why.

Fai had positioned himself, one hand curled around Kurogane's hip to steady himself and one arm wrapped around Kurogane's thigh, holding it apart; he pressed a kiss against the meat of the muscle there and then shifted. Kurogane twitched and suppressed a growl as Fai slowly pushed into him, the sensation both familiar and strange, burning and filling and strange and _good_, but Fai had his head tipped to one side and his neck bared and Kurogane fisted his hands in the blankets and stared at that, watching the way Fai's Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed.

He trusted this man. It had taken a while to get here, but they were here, now.

"You, um... satisfied?" Fai asked. He was flushed and there was sweat on his brow, and it took Kurogane a moment to realise the wizard was still practicing his Japanese.

"I'm _good_," he said, heavily. He arched his back and balled his fist up, smacking the blond lightly on the shoulder. "Don't just stand there. Get a move on."

Fai tried to look disapproving, but only succeeded in looking happy and amused. "So _grouchy,_" he said, but his hips began to jerk and Kurogane hummed low and deep in his throat at the sensation of the bastard's cock shifting inside him, shallow blasts of pleasure that staticked their way through all of his chest.

It wasn't like Kurogane had a strong preference for any different position in bed, but as Fai's hips rocked, as he dug his heels into the sheets and threw his head back and growled - as the pleasure of it, the shocky bursts of heat and need and sparkling, thundering _want_ coursed through his body, setting him alight from his fingertips to his toes - he thought that this wasn't at all a bad way to go about things; Fai, over him, above him, in him, eyes almost glowing with satisfaction and glee and sweat beading on his forehead too perfect a sight to ignore. Kurogane reached up and traced his husband's eyebrow with a thumb and _heh_ed, a _heh_ that turned into a different noise when Fai thrust inside him sharply and startled a dizzying rush of desire that made his eyes blur.

He was growing closer, he could feel it in his balls, and Fai was too; his thrusts were becoming sloppier, erratic but with more power behind them as he worked toward his orgasm. Kurogane wound his fingers into Fai's long tail of hair and pulled him down, growling into the idiot's ear, and maybe that was what Fai needed because he came with a suddenness that surprised even him, judging from the stupid expression on his face and the yelped, "Kuro-sama-!"

Kurogane wrinkled his nose at the sudden rush of wet heat inside him and bit Fai's ear to make him _help_. Dazed, fumbling, barely seeming to know where he was, Fai curled a hand still slick with lube and sweat around Kurogane's cock trapped between their bodies and gave it a slow, luxurious stroke that curled Kurogane's toes and made him grunt.

Each fumbling, slow stroke along the hot hard length of Kurogane's cock had him jerking his hips up, panting hoarsely; Fai turned his head to press his nose into Kurogane's collarbones and Kurogane could _feel_ the idiot grinning. He was still inside Kurogane, still mostly hard, but Kurogane could feel the tension building in his thighs and belly and balls and his hands tightened reflexively on the idiot's body, making him grin wider; and Fai was tugging and stroking and _yes, almost, fuck..._

He came with a throaty snarl, spattering himself and Fai, and instead of wrinkling his nose and bitching about it Fai just pushed himself up onto his elbows and kissed the side of Kurogane's nose smartly. Kurogane barely noticed, but he made a small noise of complaint when Fai slid out of him and settled beside him, eyes bright and warm. "Kuro-sama is loud," he said.

Kurogane didn't bother replying, just staring up at the ceiling and waiting for his vision to settle so that there was only one wooden beam again. He was probably grinning like an idiot. He didn't care.

Fai was much more restless after sex than Kurogane was, and to his annoyance he was barely out of the afterglow when the blond began shifting impatiently beside him, making as if to leave. Kurogane reached out and grabbed him by the wrist, yanking him back, and Fai laughed. "Kuro-cling," he said, "You need to let me go."

"I'm not _clinging_," Kurogane protested. "It's just... why the hell are you moving so soon?"

Fai's sharp wolf-grin settled into a softer smile, and he bent over to kiss the crown of Kurogane's head. "We need to clean up," he said, his lips tickling against Kurogane's scalp. "Try not to fall asleep."

"'s if I could," Kurogane said, and managed to ruin it by yawning hugely.

He was _not_ dozing off by the time Fai reached the dresser, with its basin and pitcher of water; and he definitely did _not_ jerk awake when Fai threw a wet washcloth at him and it struck him in the chest. He also did not _yelp_, and there was no call for his idiot to laugh at him while he cleaned up with bad grace. He also was _not_ an 'angry puppy,' for fuck's sake, and one day Fai would knock it off with the nicknames - excerpt probably not, if he was learning how to say them in Japanese.

"I'm going to open the shutter for some air, Kuro-pii," Fai said, ignoring the torrent of grumbled abuse Kurogane was directing his way with typical aplomb. He picked his cloak up from where Kurogane had dropped it earlier, sliding it over his shoulders and tweaking it so that it covered everything vital, holding it closed with one hand while he pushed the steel shutter open with the other. Immediately the noise level increased in their room.

"Don't be long," Kurogane growled, tossing the washcloth back across the room and flopping back on the sheets. He held out an arm and let his eyes drift closed, his breathing slowing and evening as he waited for Fai to come to bed.

Instead, after a long moment, Fai said, "There seems to be movement toward the town square."

Thinking of the town square and the dead dragon therein soured his mood. Kurogane huffed under his breath and opened one eye; Fai was leaning with his elbows on the windowsill, looking out at the street under their window. He'd given up holding the cloak closed, perhaps realising nobody could see anything sensitive from street level; and he was balanced on the balls of his feet, pale and skinny and tall.

"Think it's got anything to do with us?" he asked, and Fai shook his head. Kurogane heaved out a breath. "So come to bed, idiot."

Fai glanced back at him over his shoulder, amused. "Kuro-sama isn't even a little bit curious?"

Kurogane thought of the dead dragon. "No."

"Well, I am," Fai said firmly. He pushed away from the window, came over to the bed only to sit down on its edge and reach for his clothing. "I think I'm going to go take a look."

"It can't wait?" Kurogane demanded, pushing himself up on one elbow; Fai ignored him and with a surly growl Kurogane forced himself to hunt down his own clothing too. _Idiot._

The stairway of the inn cut right up through the middle, with rooms arranged on a walkway around it. Syaoran's room was opposite theirs, to grant the poor kid as much escape as possible, and when they left he was just locking up his door behind him, evidently about to come fetch them. Mokona was riding on his shoulder, and when she saw them she let out an ear-piercing whistle to get their attention. Kurogane winced, but Fai waved back.

"Things are getting chaotic outside," Syaoran said, when they met on the landing at the top of the stairs. They could see the common room from their vantage point; it was steadily emptying. "Some men brought a stripped-down tree trunk into the square, but I couldn't see what they were doing from my window."

"Something macabre, no doubt," Fai said with a sigh. "Still, we should investigate!"

Kurogane snorted. "'Should'?"

"It's best to be informed," Syaoran said, and pulled a wry face. "If we'd looked around in that one world, you wouldn't have ended up naked in the castle fountain at two in the morn -"

"Okay! Okay, yeah, whatever," Kurogane said hastily, ignoring the way Fai was cackling loudly beside him.

"Poor Kuro-nude," Mokona said cheerfully. "He was almost blue by the time mommy fished him out the water. Luckily Fai-mommy was there to warm him~"

Kurogane growled and took a swing at her, deliberately slowly; she bounced off Syaoran's shoulder and hid behind Fai's head with a loud wail. Fai chuckled and angled his head to nuzzle his cheek against hers. "Don't worry, Moko-chan," he said cheerfully. "Mr Woof Woof won't hurt you."

Kurogane rolled his eyes by way of response, but Mokona hopped onto his shoulder as they made their way down the stairs, and he didn't complain.

The bonfires were still burning outside, filling the air the scent of smoke and burning meat. The wooden tree trunk Syaoran had observed being brought into the square lay on the grass, some men leaning over it with ropes; they wore the plain clothes of the villagers rather the brown leather of the dragonslayers, and they were calling up to some of their fellows sitting on the silver dragon's back. While they'd been distracted, someone had sawn off her horns and pulled the spikes out of the end of her tail, and the men on her back had a double wood-saw, the kind that two people used to saw trees down together, one on each side of her wing joint. Kurogane gritted his teeth.

"Her wings," Fai said, shading his eyes with one hand. The atmosphere in the town square was jovial; the spot where the travellers stood was seemingly the only non-festive area in the crowd. "They're going after her wings. I suppose they make a good trophy."

He sounded disappointed. Syaoran said, "The dragonslayers apparently demanded certain parts of her corpse for the Emperor who commissioned them. I wonder why?"

"You could find out," Fai said, but there wasn't much heat or interest in his voice. He sighed heavily.

"Yuck," Mokona said solidly. Kurogane was inclined to agree. "The people here are _mean_."

Syaoran nodded absently, and then seemed to remember that it wasn't in his nature to judge people. "Well, she did terrorise the townsfolk for more than a decade. She sabotaged their livelihoods and did her best to kill them, and she may have succeeded in the case of those teenagers."

Fai wrinkled his nose. "I suppose," he said dubiously. "Still... maybe we should go inside."

Kurogane wanted to, and he knew Mokona did too; the random butchery of so special a creature as a silver dragon did not sit well with him. He took a step back toward the inn, shouldering aside a spectator, only for Fai to abruptly grab his wrist. He blinked at the idiot in surprise.

"Kuro-sama," Fai said, "Do you see that man over there?"

He was looking at the other end of the square. Kurogane followed his gaze and saw a man in brown leather seemingly chopping meat at a table with a butcher's cleaver, but paying no attention to his task; instead he was glowering sullenly at the men on the dragon's back trying to saw off her wings. "Yeah," he said coolly. "He's one of those dragon killers."

Fai nodded absently. "I wonder why he looks so... unenthusiastic."

Kurogane sighed. "Does it matter?"

"In the grand scheme of things?" Fai glanced at him with sympathetic eyes. They were both blue today. "No. Who cares why one man isn't in a feasting mood? But... I'm curious."

Kurogane ground his teeth and broke Fai's grip, reversing it so that it was he who was holding the man's wrist. "That's it? Curiosity? Wizard."

Fai shrugged. "I know, it sounds strange, but I... just want to go over there and find out what's happening. I don't know why. But I probably won't be long, if you want to go back to the inn." He reached up and touched Kurogane's knuckles gently with his free hand. "I know this makes you uncomfortable. I won't keep you waiting too long, promise."

Well, Kurogane thought, if the wizard didn't know by now that they were a unit...

They left Mokona with Syaoran, who said he was planning on finding out more about the Emperor and why he might want the horns and tail-spikes of a dragon. The crowds made navigating their way across the square difficult, but Kurogane had about reached his limit when it came to patience. He didn't need to shove people out of the way; he was big and tall enough that they moved voluntarily. Fai followed in his wake, occasionally clapping and cheering, and it was a mark of how rowdy the crowd was that nobody seemed to notice their disturbance.

The sullen man was in the midst of skinning a rabbit with an ungraceful, dour expression when they approached. He was wearing a dirty, bloodied apron over his leathers; when Kurogane's shadow fell over him he glanced up sharply and his eyes widened, only to relax when Fai poked his head around Kurogane's side. Kurogane didn't even _have_ to look at the idiot to know he was smiling his harmless, friendly smile. "Hi," Fai said happily. "I'm Fai. You seem a bit down over here, we were wondering if you wanted a mug of wine?"

He must have stolen it from someone in the crowd. It was only about two thirds-full, but the sullen man cheered up considerably when he held it out in offer. "Why, that's kind of you," he said, and with a final, unnecessarily dramatic slam, buried the cleaver into the table surface. Kurogane was pretty sure the gesture was designed to try and intimidate him and bared his teeth silently; unseen by the sullen man, Fai put a gentle hand on his lower back, half reassurance and half apology.

"Everyone seems so cheerful," Fai said in a tone of voice that Kurogane knew was his false-gaiety tone. "I saw you looking glum across the square, and that just didn't seem fair. What're you stuck working here for?"

"Orders," the man said with a sigh. "'Fai,' was it? I'm Xavier. And who is your friend here?"

Fai hesitated, eyes flicking between Xavier and Kurogane, and then the corner of his mouth quirked up. "He's a colleague," he lied smoothly, and Kurogane knew what the fuck he was playing at then and sighed deeply. Xavier was looking at Fai with a certain kind of interest he'd come to recognise over the years, and he _knew_ that Fai was attractive and he _knew_ other people noticed it just as much as he knew Fai didn't care about other people... but even though he knew Fai was his, even though he wore the man's wedding band on his finger and had been in bed with him not twenty minutes ago, Kurogane didn't think he'd ever be okay with strangers looking at Fai like that.

"I see," Xavier said, giving Kurogane a once-over and then dismissing him as irrelevant. He smiled at Fai. "I don't remember seeing someone like you in the village before."

"Just got in today," Fai said with a wave. "We came to see the dragon's corpse. It's amazing how you brought something so big down!"

Xavier nodded, taking a long pull of his wine. "Ballista bolt," he said. "It was getting her back that was the hard part. Still, we're guaranteed to be rewarded by the Emperor. He's been after dragon scales and horns for years; his apothecaries have assured him that if he grinds them into a powder and drinks them he'll live forever."

"Will he?" Fai sounded curious.

"Who cares?" Xavier said. He drained the last dregs of his mug and smiled at Fai crookedly. "We've got his samples; and a bonus for ourselves, aye. For two live dragonets he's sure to grant us at least ducal coronets."

Fai didn't say anything for several seconds. In the background the intrepid villagers succeeded on getting one of the wings loose; it fell heavily to the ground and the crowd cheered, ragged and drunken. "You captured live ones?"

Xavier put his cup down and smirked at them. "Want to see?"

The blond didn't answer immediately. His hand on Kurogane's back was tense, and Kurogane sighed and turned to look at him; he was looking down at the ground, his long hair shadowing his eyes. "I... yeah," he said, and coughed. "I suppose. They aren't dangerous?"

He looked at Kurogane while Xavier answered instead of listening, and his eyes carried a question without words: _are you okay with taking a look_? Kurogane couldn't say he was thrilled. But he couldn't see why not, either; if the young were being mistreated perhaps he could offer them a clean death.

Xavier shrugged off the bloody apron and threw it onto the table, wrapping the quarters of rabbit up in its folds and hefting them under his arm. "Just a word of warning," he said, "Dragons are magical beasts by their very natures, do you see? Even these young ones can perform some magical tricks. Their current favourite is to adopt human shape to trick people into sympathising with them. Try not to fall for it."

He led them into a nearby building. Perhaps it had been a house, but it seemed to have been overtaken by the dragonslayer band upon their arrival in the town; weapons bristled from the surfaces, crates of travel provisions set in the corners, and extra blankets were heaped haphazardly across the room on top of a stack of pallets. Four men were sitting around a table playing a card game when Xavier led them in, dressed in chainmail and hardboiled leather. Each of them wore a sword at his hip and had a musket leaning against the table next to him, and they all glanced up when Xavier entered.

"Dinner time?" One of them asked, and Xavier nodded. "Who're these guys?"

"Writers," Xavier said. He walked past the table and bent down at a wooden trapdoor set into the floor, hooking his fingers into the ring and heaving it open. He let the meat fall, shaking it loose from the apron, and turned to Fai and Kurogane, jerking his head at them invitingly and grinning. "Here they are, come see."

Kurogane approached first, feeling Ginryuu beneath his skin and narrowing his eyes as he bent down to look into the trapdoor. There was an earth cellar down there, dark and dry and stained with old blood, and the smell was terrible: rot and decay and old leather, fetid and overwhelming. He covered his nose with his sleeve, narrowing his eyes as he squinted into the shadows. "It's dark."

"Here, Kuro-tan," Fai said, picking up a lantern from the wall and passing it to him. Kurogane held it carefully and lowered it as he looked in, and there he found the dragons, up against the far wall.

He was aware he must have frozen. Behind him Fai made a curious sound, but he couldn't think of what to do, staring at the yellow butter-light of the lamp over the small dragonets. Xavier was looking at him smugly, he knew, but all he could do was stare, and then like the thought entered his mind like a flash of lightning: _Fai can't see this._

"Kuro-sama? Let me see," Fai said, reaching for the light as Kurogane stood up, and Kurogane turned sharply; Fai's eyebrows raised at the expression on his face, humour draining away.

"We have to go," Kurogane said, and then cursed himself when Fai frowned.

"What is it?" Fai's eyes flicked to the pit, and Kurogane knew then that it was hopeless. He _could_ stop Fai from seeing - bodily pin him down and keep him wrestled until Mokona's earring glowed - but it was a stupid wish, a child's wish to protect someone he cared about, and Fai was old enough now to deal with crises by himself.

He held out the lantern, but reluctantly, and when Fai took it with unusual care, still staring at him, he could only wonder what his expression looked like.

Fai knelt down by the pit and shone the lamp in, and when his spine stiffened, Kurogane knew he'd seen the same thing he had. Two children, human and small, bundled up under rags in that dark cell; dark blood over their blanket and blue eyes dim and uncomprehending. Pale, drawn little faces and dirty blond hair. _Dragons_, Xavier had said; _dragon_ the corpse outside was, but the two matching little boys here under the dirt looked nothing like a dragon. "Hey," he said quietly, "Wizard -"

Fai stood up, putting the lantern down carefully beside the cellar door. His hands were very pale, as was the bit of his face Kurogane could see past his hair. In a soft, ethereal voice, he said, "Thank you for showing us, Mr Xavier," and then he was climbing to his feet and rushing past the astonished Xavier, past the four human guards, past _Kurogane_ and toward the outside air, and with a muffled curse Kurogane shot after him. He caught Fai right outside the door with a hand on his shoulder and he could feel the tension in that wirey frame even as he spun Fai around to look at him.

"Hey," he said, taking a closer look at Fai's face. "... Shit. Come here." He dragged the wizard through an alleyway next to the makeshift barracks/prison, and just in time as Fai bent over the ground and vomited up the wine and anything else in his stomach, mercifully managing to avoid spattering either of them. Not that it would have mattered if he had. Kurogane carefully brushed the blond's ponytail out of the way and held it high at the base of his skull, off his neck. "... Hey."

Fai heaved and threw up again, and Kurogane didn't say anything, just shifted to rest his artificial hand quietly over the small of his back. A group of villagers passed through the alley opening; a woman did a double-take and poked her head inside. "Go away," Kurogane growled at her.

She sniffed. "He shouldn't've drunk so much," she opined, and held out a flask. "Here, some water."

Kurogane took it from her with ill grace and she stomped off in a huff, but Fai didn't appear to care; he took the water flash from Kurogane in both hands, shaking terribly, and chugged several mouthfuls of the contents, swilling them around in his mouth before spitting them out onto the dirt. He was just as pale as he'd been in the barracks.

"Look," Kurogane said, "Fai..."

Fai didn't bother trying to smile; instead he hunkered down into a crouch, pressing the heel of one hand against his forehead, and allowed his eyes to flutter closed. In a thin, weak voice he said, "I'm sorry, Kuro-sama. I was warned, but I didn't..."

"You didn't what?" Kurogane asked sharply.

"I didn't know they were going to look like us," Fai murmered. "It's - I'm sorry. They must have gotten the images out of my head, I can't..."

"Fai-san! Kurogane-san!" Mokona's voice was just audible above the crowd. Kurogane ignored her in favour of crouching down opposite Fai, closing his hands on the idiot's shoulders, and Fai's eyes cracked open a slit. He'd lost track of his illusory spell, and his eyes showed as they really were - blue and gold.

"You think they picked their human shapes out of your head?" Kurogane asked in a low voice.

"Kuro-daddy~! Where are youuu?"

"What else could they have done?" Fai whispered. He sounded drawn, kitten-weak and heartsick.

"In here!" Kurogane called loudly, and after a moment Syaoran poked his head around the alleyway entrance and wrinkled his nose.

"They got the wings up," Syaoran said. "Why are you in here? It smells... Is there something wrong with Fai-san?"

Mokona made a little squeak of indignation and bounced off Syaoran's head and onto Fai's shoulder by way of Kurogane's. "Was someone mean to you? Did they hurt you? Mokona will show them her Secret Best Friend Revenge Technique!"

Fai smiled for her, weak but genuine, and set about comforting her. Kurogane sat back on his heels and glanced up at Syaoran. "Kid," he said, an idea taking root. "Can you go next door, into this building here, and ask to see their captive dragons?"

"They have captive dragons?" Syaoran's eyes widened. "Oh, no - of course. Do they look like the queen out there?"

Kurogane squinted at him. "ﾑQueen'?"

"It's the technical term for a female dragon, apparently," Syaoran said. He sighed. "I've gotten a lot of information in the last ten minutes. Sometimes I wish I really was writing a travelling journal. I'll go have a look at these captives... Mokona, will you stay with Fai for me?"

Mokona hummed agreement, nuzzling up against Fai's cheek, and Kurogane watched the boy go. Fai took a slow breath. "What are you doing, Kuro-sama?"

"You think they stole their disguise out of your head to influence you," Kurogane said, flatly, "But you know the boy as well as I do. If they want to influence him, they won't imitate you. They'll imitate him or the princess when they were younger, or that shopkeeper."

Fai looked at him with a perfectly blank face for a long moment. "What if... No. I'm sorry. I... I thought I'd let him go, I..." He stroked Mokona carefully, and she made a small sound of concern. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to worry you."

Mokona pulled a face and bounced up and down. "If Fai is upset, Fai is upset!" she scolded. "Fai should know this already."

"I do. I'm sorry."

Kurogane stood up, his fingers switching, and walked away from the blond and the pork bun to the mouth of the alley. The wings had been erected, roped to the tree trunk so that they were spread, shining bright and almost golden in the torchlight. The sun was almost below the horizon, and the light was red and old and weak. The bonfires were still burning, and the fiddlers were still playing on the dais.

Fai's magic was humming under the skin of his flesh hand, and he could feel Ginryuu hidden there, imagine in detail her hilt with its gaping fangs and spikey mane. He didn't always keep Ginryuu there - it was awkward, drawing her from his sword hand in the middle of a fight - but it was a good way to smuggle weapons into hidden places.

Syaoran's boots rounded on the cobblestones as he came out of the barracks door faster than necessary, and he turned the corner without looking where he was going and walked smack into Kurogane's chest. Kurogane caught him with a hand on his shoulder and looked down at the kid, watching the tense lines around his eyes and mouth, and the way Syaoran's gaze drifted past him to Fai, his features turning sad and sympathetic, answered his question before he could even ask it.

"No," Fai said. His voice was rough and scraped but there was steel inside it. "No, that's not possible. It's not - they're _dragons_, they can't be me or... or... or F-Fai."

"Why not?" Syaoran demanded. "We've seen alternate versions of ourselves before - you remember the world where Kurogane-sensei was a travelling demon-slayer."

"They're not even human," Fai said, dazed.

"_Tche_," Kurogane snapped. "Is that it, the best you've got? They're not human?"

They may not have been, but their mother was being torn apart above ground on the daylight, and they had been spotted with old dried blood and skinny like two little boys in a tower and a corpse-pit. Kurogane hadn't wanted to know, but that didn't mean he'd ever forget, either.

"Souls are souls," Syaoran argued. "Remember we've met that golem of yours from Ceres in several worlds since, and in some of them she's been human!"

"Or a robot," Kurogane said.

"Or that," Syaoran agreed. "And - Kamui-san? He was a purebred vampire the first time we met, he'd never been anything else, but nine jumps ago we met a human version, do you remember?"

Fai turned his head to look at them. His eyes were both molten gold and miserable. "Yes," he said, in an awful, hollow sort of voice. He looked away again, steepling his fingers and pressing his face against his palms; his voice was sad and lost and hoarse when he said, muffled, "Why are we always destined to die? Is this hitsuzen?"

Kurogane curled his fingers into fists. "No," he said, flatly. "We _make_ our choices."

Syaoran said softly, "What are we going to do?"

"We're not leaving them there," Kurogane said immediately, and then paused, evaluating the statement and finding nothing wrong with it. "Like _fuck_ are we leaving them there."

"There's no other dragons around that anybody knows of," Syaoran replied. He reached into his inner pocket and pulled out a notebook. "I had the town priest sketch me a map by memory - look, here's us, and this is as much of the world as they know. Assuming it's a spherical world and stretching the map around a globe I was able to come up with _this_, taking into account plate tectonics and the motion of the continent - that's over thirty per cent of the globe missing, so it's likely -"

Kurogane squinted at him and Syaoran trailed off sheepishly, perhaps becoming aware that geography was not one of Kurogane's greatest concerns.

Fai was staring at them both with the same terrible lack of expression on his face. "We don't even know if they're me," he said quietly.

Kurogane snorted. "They're you," he said firmly. He didn't know how to explain it, but when he thought of the twin dragonets - small, skinny, helpless but together - somehow he became more and more sure. "We can get them out and then work out what to do with them."

Mokona jumped onto Kurogane's shoulder. "Are we really just going to break them out, daddy?" she said. "There's an awful lot of people here."

"We'll make a distraction," Syaoran said. "The buildings are fireproof, but I think Mokona and I can cause enough of a ruckus to empty the town square." He glanced out of the mouth of the alleyway, his face grim. "Destroying that pole with the queen's wings ought to suffice. As a start."

Mokona's ears perked up. "Mokona swallowed a lot of fire when she put out that burning inn last," she said helpfully. "One of her Secret Techniques is Super Ejection Power. Besides, didn't that person say the buildings are only immune to dragon fire?"

Kurogane grinned and set a heavy hand atop the pork bun's head, rubbing her ears with his palm. "That he did, poached egg."

"You're going to destroy this town for those two?" Fai was standing up, looking as though he'd misheard.

Kurogane frowned, but before he could say anything Syaoran said, calmly, "We're going to rescue _you_ and your brother. You said it's hitsuzen that you always die. Maybe we got here in time to stop it for a reason, don't you think?"

Fai's mouth opened and closed soundlessly for a few seconds, and Kurogane sighed and stepped toward him, reaching for the idiot's hand with its silver ring. "Listen," he said, "I wouldn't do this if I didn't want to. I think it's the right thing to do." He bent his head to bring his mouth closer to the wizard's ear, watched Syaoran cough and turn away discreetly out of the corner of his eye. "If I could have saved you from your past I would have, but I can't, and we're all dealing with the fallout of that. But this time we can interfere. There's no reason you _need_ to suffer, in this world or any other."

He drew back, carefully watching Fai's face as his meaning sank in; tension lines around Fai's mouth and eyes faded, and his gold eyes lost some of their wild, desperate glow. They didn't flash blue again, but they didn't need to.

"Okay," Fai said. It was a quiet word, but filled with a kind of calm strength. "Okay. Kuro-sama, I think you'll need your sword."

Kurogane grinned. He thought so too.

* * *

The shouting and yelling had clearly disarmed the guards when he and Fai entered the barracks again. Ginryuu was out, her blade glinting sharp and bright in the lanternlight. Fai held the door open to let in the screams and yells in the distance, the sound of collapsing masonry; Syaoran's young voice could be heard crying out the names of his sword attacks as he swung at another building, and while was pretty sure the kid would never kill anyone, the guards had no way of knowing that.

"Fai," Xavier said. He was holding a musket loosely. "What in the name of God is happening out there?"

"We've come for the dragons," Kurogane said flatly. He angled Ginryuu so her edge caught the light and hunkered down, growling. "Get out and nobody dies."

The guards exchanged a glance, and then steel rang out in the barracks as all four of them drew their swords. Fai quietly stepped up beside Kurogane. "The Emperor himself commissioned us to fetch them," said one of the guards, a short thin fellow with a notched and battered cutlass. "If you think you can just take them-!"

"I won't ask again," Kurogane said.

Fai took a deep breath, and then said, very softly, "If you don't give them to us, _you will wish you had_."

The guards raised their weapons, and beside Kurogane Fai made a low, rumbling noise like a cat; his gloves tore as his fingernails grew out, and Kurogane glanced over to see him with his golden eyes aglow, cat-slit and cruel in an expressionless mask of a face; his teeth were razor fangs and he bared them to hiss defiance at the guards.

"Witchcraft," said one of them, horrified.

Another of them backed up a step, raising a shaking hand. "_Devil creature_!"

Fai crouched down low, claws glinting like razor blades in the lanternlight, and snarled, "_Give me the dragons_!"

"Yeah," Kurogane said, taking Fai's fury and running with it. He grinned. It was not a nice grin. "You want to do what he says. He's a blood-drinker and you look like _food_."

"The Emperor," said a guard, anxiously; another one spat and held up a hand, forming a shakey cross sign with his fingers over the guard over the sword.

"Fuck the Emperor," said Xavier, pale. "That thing is _the devil_. I value my soul more than money!"

"Aye, me too," said another individual, his hands shivering. He crouched down and carefully dropped the sword. "There! Take the fucking dragons! Don't kill me, I have a wife -"

Fai snapped at him and as a man all of the guards jumped; Kurogane stepped aside and gestured at the door. He kept Ginryuu bared and ready, and grabbed Fai by the shoulder as if holding him back as Xavier and the guard with no sword edges cautiously past him; their boots pounded in the dust as they ran for it as soon as they were free.

"That was easy," he said lazily. He raised an eyebrow at the three remaining men.

"No," said one. "No, I won't - the Great Golden God is my father, he shall consecrate my soul -"

Fai swiped casually at him, and though he raised his rapier to block, it didn't do him a whole lot of good. Pieces of metal tinkled as they bounced off the wooden floors. "Get out," Fai said coldly. They fled.

"Idiots," Kurogane said, shaking his head. He slid Ginryuu into her scabbard and belted her over his hip, easier than putting her back in his arm, and made his way over to the trap door. "Come on, here."

Fai trailed him, picking up a lantern from one of the walls and squatting down next to the cellar entrance as Kurogane heaved it open by the iron ring. "I'll get ﾑem and pass ﾑem up to you," Kurogane said. "Hold it steady."

"Of course," Fai said. Kurogane braced himself with a hand on the edge and jumped down into the dirty little cellar floor, and Fai leaned forward, holding out the light. "Can you see them?"

They had moved from the far wall to a filthy straw pallet in one of the corners, surrounded by gobbets of meat in varying states of decay and a bucket of stagnant water. Their eyes were barely visible underneath the ratty bloodstained blanket. Kurogane took a deep breath. "Yeah, I can see them."

They began to whimper when he approached, pressing back against the wall; and when he crouched down next to the pallet their forms _rippled_, disappearing from them in a wave until instead of human toddlers there were two small creatures, each the size of Mokona, mewling pathetically and trying to reverse into the wall. Their mother had been silver but they were the dull grey of granite, and there was something wrong with their feet - spots of bright blood bloomed over the blanket wherever they stepped.

Kurogane had learned that killing wasn't the answer to everything, but part of him wished that Fai hadn't terrified those guards quite so much upstairs. Having their blood on Ginryuu's blade would probably only dishonour her, but he couldn't find it in himself to be sorry at the thought of their demise.

"Settle down," he said, which had exactly no effect on the mewling dragonlets. "Settle down, you're fine. I'm getting you out of here."

He scooped one up in each hand. They were so small he thought _Mokona_ might have weighed more, and most of what there was to them seemed to consist of wings and long, whiplike tails, flicking frantically through the air as they called helplessly. Fai's face, through the cellar door, was torn between compassion and grief. "Sending one up to you," he called, and balanced on the balls of his feet, leaning up as far as he could; Fai carefully set the lantern aside and reached down to take it. Its squeaking subsided when Fai's hands closed carefully around its side, both of them careful of its papery, delicate little wings.

"Got him," Fai said, and then, softly, "I... I think this one is..."

"It can wait," Kurogane interrupted. He held up the other one, which was squirming in his grip, trying to flap its undersized wings. They were so thin they were almost translucent, nothing like its mother's great silver bat-wings. It was crying helplessly, but it too quietened when Fai took hold of it. Maybe it knew him, by his touch.

"Do you need help getting back up?" Fai called, and then winced as something banged outside. "Kuro-sama, hurry, I think that was a musket -"

"Give me a hand," Kurogane ordered. Fai reached in and took him by the wrist; and with all the strength of his vampirism, set about pulling Kurogane up and out. He looked grim when Kurogane climbed out of the cellar door. The dragonets were huddled against his side, although when Kurogane kicked the trapdoor closed with a thud that rattled the abandoned cutlery on the guard's table they began to wriggle away, mewling; there was definitely something wrong with their feet, and Kurogane's brow furrowed. Fai followed his gaze and sighed.

"They cropped their claws back," he said, in a low, angry voice. He sounded fierce and protective, suddenly. "Too far back. Kuro-sama, we're getting out of this town."

"Yeah," Kurogane agreed, watching as Fai scooped up one of the writhing little dragons by its middle, and then breathed out in surprise when his husband thrust the dragon into his arms. It squeaked in panic and thrashed, but Kurogane's grip was too tight for it to escape. "Oi, what -"

"I can't run and carry _both_ of them," Fai said. He bundled the other inside his cloak, where its mewling subsided. "Let's _go_."

Nobody paid them any attention as they ran through the town, even though the dragonlet inside Kurogane's cloak was crying in a thin, reedy little voice. For its mother or brother, presumably, Kurogane thought. Every now and then the one curled up to Fai responded to it.

Syaoran and Mokona had pulled out all of the stops; there was a lot of rubble in the streets, and a lot of panic from the villagers, but no sign of anyone injured or dead. It was a markedly different atmosphere to the festival earlier. Kurogane didn't care; he preferred the little creature pressed against his chest to a bunch of drunken revelry anyway.

They'd agreed to meet Syaoran and Mokona on the far side of the lake, and they were the first to arrive. Kurogane undid his cloak and watched as Fai hesitated, looking around at the stumps of trees, cut down for lumber. "There's no hiding places," he said, sounding worried.

"We're not staying here long," Kurogane said. He opened the folds of the cloak, unhurried, and nodded when the dragonet within was released; it spread its little wings and took a wincing step toward Fai, who let out an exclamation and went to his knees to catch it.

"They're so small," he said quietly. The baby dragon he'd carried with him was squeaking at its twin, or brother, or whatever the hell they were. Both of them bumped their heads together, nuzzling cheeks, and then glanced curiously up at Fai. At least they weren't crying any more - the noise had sounded alarmingly similar to a baby's cry.

"They seem okay with you," Kurogane remarked. Fai glanced at him and bit his lower lip.

"Maybe they think I'm their father. I... I never knew mine. They took down his official portrait after he died. Nobody was allowed to speak of him, at least, not around... around us. But he must have had my colouring, right? Blond hair and blue eyes have to be present in both parents, somewhere."

The dragonet Kurogane had carried out of the town had placed a paw on his chest, its toes twitching, and it was making a small, soft noise. Its blue eyes were bright and alarmed, and Fai smiled down at it. "I'm not going to let them hurt you," he said fiercely.

Kurogane took a few steps away from him, scanning their surroundings, but his attention was only half on potential threads. Privately he thought the young dragons weren't soothed by Fai's presence because of any potential mix-up with their father but rather because, on some primal, unspoken level, they recognised his soul. Kind of like he thought he knew that the dragon that had been huddled against his chest, small and hot and quivering - rumbling with terror and shakes, so frightened it didn't try to fight him - he thought he knew which of the twins _that_ one was.

"What happens next, mage?" he said quietly. "Are we finding others of their type? Anything you choose, you know I'll follow."

Fai glanced up at him, and when he smiled his eyes were both blue; tired, worn, and less carefree than usual - but blue. "I know," he said, and then, firmly, "You know I love you, right, Kuro-sama?"

"Never forgotten," Kurogane said. He crouched down about a meter away from Fai and the twin dragonlets; they squeaked in fear and pressed closer to the older blond. Kurogane breathed out softly. "I'm not going to hurt them."

"It might take a while for them to believe that," Fai said. "They were... mistreated. I remember what that was like." He looked up and met Kurogane's eyes, serious and bold. "I trusted Ashura, Kuro-sama. And they'll trust you."

Kurogane pulled a face. "You sound like you've decided to keep them."

"They're me. I didn't believe you, I didn't want to believe you, but - I know. That one's me. The other one's Fai. I... I don't know if they have names, Kuro-sama, but I... I don't want them to have mine and my brother's." "So you're just going to name them?"

"Maybe." Fai looked ill at ease. "I don't know. I don't really know what to do."

Kurogane shifted across the sand of the eviscerated lake beach and kissed Fai on the forehead carefully. "You'll work it out. You've been good to all the other kids so far. And _that_ one is definitely you."

"You sensed it too?" Fai was watching him in surprise.

"He bit me on the way out," Kurogane said. He didn't exaggerate or expand on the story. He didn't have to. Clawless, tiny and weak, malnourished and afraid, and the little dragon had still bitten him. It had a fight to it. Of course it was Fai.

Fai shifted the babies in his lap, his expression going soft as he looked down at them. They were still pressed tight against him, still shivering; carefully he folded the cloak around them, his hands so very gentle and thorough.

"They're going to stick out wherever we go," Kurogane said. "We don't know what they eat, we don't know what to do if they get sick, we're not going to have any privacy, and they're going to take a long time to get comfortable with all of us."

Fai glanced at him. "I know. You seemed in favour of it before; don't tell me you're changing your mind."

Kurogane huffed out a breath. "I'm not," he said. "I... I wanted to rescue them. I don't regret it. I don't mind taking responsibility for them, either. Apparently I can't resist a version of you."

This made Fai smile, soft and warm. "_Anata_," he said, and Kurogane blinked at him; but Fai was talking to the twins. "This is my husband, your Kuro-daddy. You'll get used to him, I promise."

The biting twin, Fai himself, blinked up at Fai and made a little chirping noise. He scrabbled at Fai's clothes, missed, and with a whimper of pain turned human all of a sudden, clearly surprising himself with the transition; with a squeak the other one followed suit. They were so small with their pale faces and clipped-back bloody fingertips and bright blue eyes, and Fai bent over them, tweaking the cloak up to cover their small forms from the world. He carefully hooked one index finger under a skinny wrist, lifting the child's wounded hands up. "When Mokona gets here, ask her for the anti-septic cream and bandages," he said.

Kurogane nodded, but Fai turned and looked at him, sad and yet warm at once. "When Ashura first brought me back from Ceres, the first thing he did was rub ointment into my hands."

Quietly Kurogane said, "This won't end up like you and Ashura."

Another ear-piercing whistle echoed across the lake, then, startling the twins; Kurogane turned his head and saw Mokona waving at them from atop Syaoran's head. The boy's clothes were torn and his sword was out, and he was dirty with soot and smoke, but he looked unharmed. He was picking his way around the edges of the lake.

"Looks like the kid's coming," Kurogane said. "We should get ready to head into the treeline until the pork bun's earring glows."

"Mmm," Fai agreed. He stroked the twins' hair, softly, and then cleared his throat. "I'm just trying to think to settle them first. How did it go... I never knew any Valerian lullabies, and I was... too old, too damaged when I arrived in Ceres..."

"Don't look at me," Kurogane said flatly. "I can't help you."

Fai looked at him and grinned, quick and mischievous. "_You_ might not, Kuro-tan, but the books I've been reading in your language can."

And as Kurogane stared at him, disbelieving, Fai smoothed his fingers gently through the children's hair and began hesitantly humming a Japanese cradle song, to the wrong tune entirely and with the occasional mispronounced word. It was not something Kurogane himself had heard as a child, but he'd heard it crooned at Shirasagi and he'd never thought he'd hear it here, in this place, from this man and to this man's own duplicates. Fai's voice was soft and low and even; it was gentle and kind and promised gentleness and kindness galore, and though the dragon-young had been scared, although they _still_ were, by the time Syaoran approached their eyelids were drooping.

"Sssh," Fai said reproachfully to the new arrivals. Syaoran tilted his head to one side and smiled.

"I knew you'd get through to them," he said. "It's who you are, Fai-san."

It was, Kurogane thought. Fai was good with small, fragile things. That was empathy for you.

"Um," Mokona said in a small voice, and Syaoran and Kurogane glanced up at her only to grin simultaneously; her earring was beginning to glow.

"Onward, I suppose," Syaoran said. He crouched down opposite Fai, keeping his body language tightly controlled and his gestures non-threatening; not that it mattered, the babies were mostly asleep. "Fai-san? Are they coming with us?"

"Of course they are," Kurogane said impatiently, and Fai didn't stop singing but did smile, warbling the notes.

"Let's go!" Mokona said, and leapt into the air; and her wings billowed out, white and pristine and wide. Kurogane set a hand on Fai's shoulder and caught Syaoran's sleeve with the other, to keep them together as the world began to disintegrate around them in white light and humming magic.

The last he saw of that world was the lake and the beach and Fai, head bowed and gaze so focused and warm on the twins in his lap; and the last he heard was the fading notes of Fai's makeshift lullaby, hanging soft and low and perfectly in tune with Mokona's magic, and then they were gone.

_-fin_

_Reversed, the Tower card can be interpreted as_ To be currently in a harsh and chaotic situation but exiting in a good manner_, or "Falling, but landing with your feet over the soil."_

* * *

THINGS I LOVE MOST IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD BY REIKAH, AGE 3 1/2:

1. Kurofai

2. TWINS

3. FUCKING DRAGONS AND SHIT, MAN

hope you enjoyed the fic!


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